Why does God choose a particular person for a particular purpose? The Bible doesn’t say that Moses, or Ruth, or David, or even Mary was better than anyone else. They were God’s chosen instruments, prepared by him for a special role.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we see the same reality of choice, as “the lot fell upon Matthias” to make him a “witness to the resurrection.” The time had come to replace Judas. The disciples reduced the number of candidates to two, and then God chose between them.

Maximin and Mélanie were the chosen witnesses of Our Lady of La Salette. Why them? We can (and do) speculate, but the most honest answer is the simplest: we don’t really know. The La Salette Missionaries and the La Salette Sisters, as well as the many lay people devoted to our Weeping Mother are her chosen witnesses today. Why us? Again, we just don’t know.

Often the words, “Why me?” are used when something bad happens to us. But we might well ask the same question when something great and wonderful happens, and in particular when we recognize that God is calling us for a special purpose.

Many people can explain what first attracted them to another person, or to a religious order, or to a certain career or ministry. It is a different matter when we look at it from the point of view of being chosen. Why did that person, that vocation, that career or ministry choose me? In other words, what was/is God’s purpose for my life?

We do know this much, however. It isn’t because we are better than anyone else. Mary’s choice, like God’s choice, is a mystery—not to be solved, but to be lived.

Jesus had chosen his Apostles, and three years later, at the Last Supper he prayed to his Father to protect them, to “consecrate them in the truth.” After all, they were to be his faithful witnesses.

Therein lies the challenge, to live what we are called to be, focused on the what and the how and the where, much more than on the why.